The Cooler Master Cosmos SE Experience

Posted by Gilgamesh on March 31st, 2014

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Day Two

Welcome to day two of our Coolermaster Cosmos SE experience. Today we are going to examine how the radiators can be installed and if they can then what size can be utilised?

Here we take advantage of the fact that we have an old Thermochill PA 120.3 radiator with the old 25mm fan spacing. Now in sooth we do not expect this to either physically fit inside the case nor have the correct mounting for such an old style radiator.

The lower left photo shows the mounting mechanism available for the Cosmos SE and soon we shall see if this will work. To make the reader aware that we really are making life hard for the Cosmos SE as the Thermochill radiator employs a non-standard fan spacing and as such will be a challenge to mount.

As shown above we painted the Thermochill radiator in similar colour theme to that of the Biostar Z87 HIFI 3D motherboard, so as to enable a common colour scheme throughout this build.

The images above show that the Comos SE can accommodate any type of radiator up to and including the massive Thermochill PA120-3. It is able to perform this feat by the use of what we call a ‘Radiator Bridge’ and thus it can adjust for a legion of differing configurations. The aforementioned ‘bridge’ comes with many screws, that consist of mounting the fans onto radiator or the bridge and the latter onto the case. However here we encounter an issue, the long screws that are designed to go through the bridge, fan and then into the radiator are of only the 6/32 variety and this is a major issue. Fan mounts on radiators come in a myriad of differing types, namely; 6/32 screw and self-tap, M3 and M4 but yet CoolerMaster have only seen fit to include 6/32? We at Overclockers Tech have gotten around this issue by mounting the fan onto the radiator and then as an additional screw utilise a 5mm self tapping type to mount the fans and by extension the radiator onto the bridge. We feel that this is an issue that they need to address.

Now that all the drive bays have been taken up by the radiator, then one can be forgiven for thinking there is no longer any space for a HDD or SSD (Hard Disk and Solid State Drives) drive right? Well Coolermaster have addressed this situation by mounting the drives out of sight on the other side, but here is where we encounter an issue. As one can see by the first photo below, the drive is mounted in such a way as to as to prevent a right-angled SATA connector from attaching to the drive. One could say a a straight SATA cable will cure this issue, however if one thinks deeper on this issue then we can deduce that all medium to high specification motherboards all come with right-angled connectors and this would would need to purchase separate straight leads.

Remember on the external tour we noticed the thumbscrew on the rear panel, which allows the consumer to remove the top panel? This is a great feature as in theory it allows the purchaser of this product to install the fans in this section and the radiator into the main chassis. The last photo (with a section ringed in red) where fan wires can be routed through to the main sections.

The position of the front panel audio connector on the motherboard is placed in such away as to force the cable from the panel to trail right over the latter, thus possibly blocking airflow. I think the problem is more likely two fold; Coolermaster For not making the I/O cable long enough to allow it to route through the cable management system and second the issue with Biostar with regards to placement of the connector.

Since we do not require the above-mentioned cable then it would be prudent to remove it altogether. Coolermaster provide this service by allowing the front I/O panel to be easily removed by two screws, (shown in the top right photo) which allows the consumer to gain easy-access to the printed circuit board.

Below we see the printed circuit board itself and the LED wires which can be (if one has similar tastes to us, ID-EST Hates BLUE LED’s with a passion) modified.